[pp.int.general] Communication Plan

[Ray Jenson]

As a serious response to Zbigniew Łukasiak, please allow me to propose the
following:

1. No voice should be more than any other, where relevant. If someone is
seriously proposing something, we should give it consideration, regardless
of who it is that proposes it. If we can't take it seriously, or we can't
support it, we should ignore it (e.g., "don't feed the trolls") or respond
with something that seems more acceptable. Given that this is not a verbal
forum, and that all subjects can be accessed and discussed openly, it
shouldn't require hierarchical mayhem to consider serious proposals.
However, a consensus in the majority should determine support. If it's
close, discussion might clear it up or it might not, but in any case,
tabling something that might be useful in the future is harmful.

2. The educational systems are geared to favor the wealthy, the politically
connected, and those being groomed for such things in the future. They are
operated by government, for government aims, within a government-approved
structure. Thus, correct and understandable grammar may not be possible for
everyone. We need to encourage these things, for certain, and help to
improve it through education. But we should understand just how atrocious
the system actually is before we bitch too loudly.

3. I'm opposed to this. I can filter out or include whatever rubbish I want
to. And occasionally, the trolls actually spark an idea with their
inconsequential drivel. We have twenty famous artists who support our
views. We have hundreds of people with no name who actively troll us. Which
voice is louder? Drown them out. The purpose of an open forum is to
encourage participation. Trolls will be trolls. They want to paint the
world as lame, because that's the only thing they see. It's what they are
inside. It's merely a reflection on them of how the world within them has
taken shape. Truly, I pity them. They are weak, mentally-ill, and
self-absorbed to the point of failure. So they try to take it out on
others. So what? No action was taken. Endure the heat and pressure. Heat
and pressure are what make diamonds, the most valued commodity in the world.

You can't moderate an automated remailer, even if you can moderate forums.
Once posted, the email forwards to everyone on the list. People of the
older generations will tend to want to interact with the same modicum of
respect and humanity we were raised with. But the younger generations
always rebel against it until they become the older generations, and
remember that they were always respectful and human.

If you delay the emails from going back out, you weaken the system and open
up a vulnerability.

The only solution is to grow thicker skin. This means we simply have to
tolerate what is protected as free speech, and to report what is not.The
originating country's laws (where the sender lives) is usually the only
entity that can actually do anything. And even then, it's hard to actually
have anything meaningful happen. And the trolls know it.

So they will continue, until we weaken the system through selective
disbursement, then they can claim freedom of speech and enlist hackers to
DDoS or break the servers on which the email is found.

Mahatma Gandhi's words come to mind: "First they ignore you, then they
laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." (No, Trump didn't
originate that, in spite of what he thinks.)



On Mon, Aug 1, 2016 at 7:31 AM, Zbigniew Łukasiak <zzbbyy at gmail.com> wrote:

> From the yesterdays board meeting:
>
> """
> In order to improve communication, and overall visibility, an action
> plan needs to be developed. The present task is: - an open discussion
> regarding on the ways to improve the communication channels - a
> virtual workshop which aims to deliver a comprehensive communication
> plan as of next PPI Board meeting for review and acceptance. The
> communication plan will incorporate the feedback presented by Members
> during the GA as well as the outcome of several bilateral discussions.
> """
>
> http://wiki.pp-international.net/PPI_Minutes_2016_07_31#11_
> -_Communication_plan_draft
>
> Lets start the discussion.
>
>
> I have written many times at this mailing list that we need some kind
> of moderation - because the list in current state repels people. I
> have talked to many previously active participants in the discussions
> here - and not many of them still read the list. We need a way to
> improve the quality of the discussions here.
>
> It is not yet decided if we want to keep the mailing list or maybe if
> we want to move the discussions to a forum - but I think we can afford
> to have both.
>
> What I think is needed for the list:
>
> 1. More equal voice for all participants - so that it will not be
> possible that one user is flooding the list with emails. This can be
> done by restricting the amount of emails each participant can send to
> the list in a given time (for example to one daily or two weekly).
> This rule can be enforced automatically and it would be impartial.
> This will mean that we'll need some ways to guard against sockpuppets.
>
> 2. We need to encourage people to put some effort into writing the
> emails - so that they are written clearly and easy to understand.
> Again limiting the frequency of emails each user can send to the list
> should improve the situation in this regard as well. But it would
> probably be not enough. Maybe we need some guides - like
> http://paulgraham.com/disagree.html ? Or maybe we need to some out of
> the list feedback mechanism?
>
> 3. Maybe we'll need moderation (from time to time?) to weed out the
> extremely vicious. But this will be hard to do well. We'd need some
> concrete guidelines for the moderators, decide who will oversee the
> moderators etc. I have not seen anything really vicious at this
> mailing list so far - even Antonio would be bearable if he was limited
> to two emails a week - but this might change in the future if we make
> the list more popular.
>
>
> One note on rules and norms.
>
> We can guide/force people to act in a way we wish they do in three ways:
> - by limiting what they can do (by automatic enforcement - for example
> making the list server limit the amount of emails each email address
> can send to the list per a given time period)
> - by making rules - do what we want or otherwise we'll do something to
> you (if you troll the list the moderator can remove you from it)
> - by norms - which are like guidelines describing what we want you to
> do, but don't have any explicit enforcement mechanism
>
> Automatic enforcement is the most impartial, easiest to enforce and
> least flexible, norms are the least impartial, hardest to establish
> and enforce - but the most flexible, rules are somewhere in between.
>
> We'll probably need all three tools.
>
> Cheers,
> Zbigniew
> ____________________________________________________
> Pirate Parties International - General Talk
> pp.international.general at lists.pirateweb.net
> http://lists.pirateweb.net/mailman/listinfo/pp.international.general
>



-- 
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Ray Jenson
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